愿将大袖遮天日，莫使春花任晓风——《源氏物语》的世界The World of The Tale of Genji

The Tale of Genji is the world's earliest full-length realist novel. Written in the middle of Japan's elegant and splendid Heian period, it represents the pinnacle of classical Japanese literature. Right up to the present, adaptations and interpretations of The Tale of Genji have grown ever richer, including this year's Taiga drama Dear Radiant One, based on the story of its author, Murasaki Shikibu. What kind of work is The Tale of Genji? It laid the foundation of the Japanese aesthetic of mono no aware. Its author, Murasaki Shikibu, a lady-in-waiting to Fujiwara no Shōshi, empress to Emperor Ichijō, wrote it with a keen eye and a deft pen. It depicts the hero, the Shining Prince Genji, who, though born an imperial prince, was reduced to commoner status and given the surname Minamoto (Genji) on the word of a physiognomist, and his many loves with women whom the author likens to flowers: as varied as blossoms in form and colour, and with fates as fleeting and easily scattered as flowers. The tale runs to fifty-four chapters and about a million words. Through waka, classical Chinese, the poems of Bai Juyi, gagaku court music, the seasonal festivals, the exchange of letters, moonlight and subtle fragrances, amid rustling robes and elegant coiffures, it presents a Heian aristocratic world that is refined and leisurely, dazzlingly splendid, yet also decadent and illusory, sorrowful and fading. Readers can also glimpse, in the shadows of this glory, the rise and fall of power and the shifts of politics at the height of the court's prosperity. But above all it is about feeling. Feelings entrusted to objects, feelings stirred by scenery, feelings expressed in poems, feelings conveyed through songs. The emotions in the tale range from ambiguous attractions that arise from who knows where to restrained, understated longing; from tragic loves that transgress morality to encounters ordained by fate; from fleeting shallow affections to piercing, unforgettable passions. In this session we will mainly tell the stories of Genji and several women, to glimpse the details of the era, human desire, and its aesthetics and philosophy. We will also introduce and compare the two main Chinese translations, by Feng Zikai and Lin Wen-yueh, and look at how The Tale of Genji, and the longing for the elegance it represents, nourished Chinese online communities and creative work at the turn of the century.